Crimson Worlds: 04 - The First Imperium Read online

  “We’re getting intel from the warp gate scanners, sir.” Lieutenant Khan didn’t take her eyes from the display as she reported. “We have ships inbound.”

  Captain Riley Calloway sat in his command chair rigid as a marble statue despite his repeated efforts to remain calm. Calloway knew his small squadron was a forlorn hope with little chance of survival. Admiral Garret hadn’t had a choice when he’d ordered them here; Calloway knew that. The admiral had sent him a personal note, and he pulled no punches in it, either about what was at stake or their chances of coming back. Augustus Garret did not send his men and women to their deaths lightly, and Calloway wasn’t about to let the admiral down. His ships would fight like hell, but their chances of victory or escape were nil. He knew that, and so did his crews. But he’d be damned if they were going to die for nothing. They had to get data back to the high command…much better data than they’d been getting up to now.

  “Ensign Carp, run a diagnostic. Confirm that the sensor array is working properly.” Calloway’s squadron had been in the system for almost three weeks, and he’d used the time to set up a network of small scanners at each warp gate. He was determined to collect solid data no matter what. Carp sat behind and to the left of the captain’s command chair. Calloway turned to look back, but his view of the ensign was partially blocked by a large plasti-steel conduit. The bridge of a fast attack ship was anything but roomy or comfortable.

  “Yes, sir.” Carp was a young officer, barely a year out of the Academy, but his answers were sharp and crisp. “Stand by for results.”

  Calloway couldn’t help but wonder what kind of career Carp might have had ahead of him. He was an excellent young officer who showed every sign of developing into an outstanding leader one day. But fate had put him in the 18th Squadron and the 18th Squadron in the path of a terrible new enemy. Ronald Carp didn’t have much chance of surviving to take a crack at that future. He was young and smart, but he was probably going to die in this system in the next few days. Calloway sighed quietly. Such waste.

  “Captain, all scanners check out fully.” Carp looked up from his display, his head tilted so he could see Calloway under the conduit. “The scanner array is up and operating, capturing all data.” Of course, the warp gate was 243 light minutes from the squadron’s position in Adelaide orbit, so the data they were receiving was more than four hours old.

  The squadron had deployed a hundred tiny scanning devices at each warp gate. Calloway didn’t doubt the enemy would be able to locate and destroy them all, but not before they sent back considerable information…data that could be crucial when the fleet was ready mount a serious defense against the invaders.

  “Ensign Carp, I want you to monitor our communications. All incoming data is to be retransmitted to the Commnet station immediately.”

  “Yes, sir.” Carp was moving his hands over his screen as he responded. “I’m sending transmissions every thirty seconds, sir.” Carp paused slightly then continued. “Commnet is sending drones on twenty minutes intervals, captain.” Another brief pause. “Any faster and the station will run out.”

  “Very well.” Calloway scowled, thinking quietly to himself. Damn, you always overlook something. He’d have preferred drone launches every five minutes to mitigate the damage when the enemy managed to knock out the station. He hated to think of losing 18 or 19 minutes of priceless data his crews had paid for with their lives. He realized they’d had neither the time nor the cargo space to bring extra Commnet drones, but it was frustrating all the same.

  “Lieutenant Khan, I want ongoing reports.” He had a better look over to Kahn’s workstation, at least one without any major obstructions. You got used to the cramped quarters on an attack ship…eventually. “Anything at all of note.”

  “Yes, sir.” Khan was a bit older than Carp, old enough to have seen combat in the closing phases of the war and then later when Admiral Garret hunted down Gavin Stark’s rogue ships. Calloway had high hopes for Carp, but the young ensign hadn’t seen battle yet. Intelligence, courage, ability…they were all important, but there was no substitute for combat experience. No training, no lectures, no emphatic warnings could truly prepare a recruit for the realities of battle. Khan had seen those realities, and she’d come through it with distinction.

  “We’re getting transit reports, sir.” Khan’s eyes were glued to her screen as she spoke. “Looks like seven ships, sir.” She paused slightly as she waited for the data to cross her display. “Yes, sir. Seven vessels. They all appear to be the same or similar class, approximately cruiser size, estimated at 40,000-50,000 tons.”

  “Very well, Lieutenant Khan. Carry on.” Calloway leaned back in his seat. “Ensign Carp, order Stingray and Hornet to commence silent running protocols.” The term was obsolete, a bit of a carryover from wet navy days. In space it didn’t refer literally to noise; it meant no non-critical use of energy. “Use line-of-site laser communication only.

  “Yes, sir. Laser communication only.”

  “Place Raptor on silent running as well.” Calloway instinctively reached for the seat belt on the command chair. Silent running meant no unnecessary energy emissions…and that meant the loss of even the modest gravity-equivalent generated by the ship’s drives. Capital ships could produce near Earth-normal gravity, or at least a reasonable facsimile, but the small attack vessels were lucky to generate one-third of that. On silent running they would lose even that - the ship would be a near zero g environment.

  Calloway knew his tiny squadron didn’t have a chance in a fight, but the longer a ship remained undetected, the more data it could collect and ultimately transmit. Perhaps, though it seemed a remote possibility to him, one of his ships might even manage to remain hidden and actually survive. If that happened, it wouldn’t be Raptor…he’d placed his ship on point to get the maximum possible amount of scanning data as the enemy approached. Stingray was positioned behind the planet relative to the enemy’s most likely axis of approach, and Hornet was hidden behind Adelaide’s distant moon, over 600,000 kilometers out. Raptor was situated to allow direct line communication with each of the other ships.

  Long-range scanners worked primarily by detecting energy emissions. A small ship like Raptor was difficult to target at any range when running silent. Calloway knew his ship would be all but invisible to scanners similar to his own at any range greater than 1,000,000 kilometers. Of course, he had no idea what kind of capabilities these enemy vessels had.

  His ships’ own ability to detect the invaders was highly dependent on the energy output of those vessels. His warp gate sensors were giving him great info now, positioned as they were in the immediate area of the transiting ships. In a Rim system like this there were typically only a few scanners deployed, while the warp gates leading to a major planet like Columbia were blanketed with detection devices designed to give extensive information on any invading fleet. But Calloway’s squadron had laced the entry points into the system with clouds of portable scanner buoys; his people would have known if a mosquito had tried to fly through the warp gate.

  Once the enemy ships wiped out his warp gate scanners – or cleared range of them – he’d lose contact for a while. Unless they blasted away with massive amounts of thrust there was little chance his ships would detect anything more distant than one light hour. Tactics then became a guessing game based on the last observed vectors and velocities of the ships.

  “Scanning array under attack, sir. Forty-three percent of scanner buoys have stopped transmitting.”

  “Thank you, lieutenant.” Calloway wasn’t surprised, but he’d hoped it would take the enemy a bit longer. “Ensign Carp, continue recording and retransmitting all data.”

  “Yes, sir.” Carp was monitoring his display closely, even though everything the captain had ordered would all be done automatically by the ship’s AI. He was going to double-check it anyway and make sure everything was sent out properly.

  It wasn’t more than another minute before the incoming data stopp
ed completely. The enemy had taken out all of the scanner buoys. Calloway took a deep breath and rubbed his forehead. It would have taken a normal fleet much longer to clear the area. Whatever these ships were, their short-range detection and targeting was spot on. Better than anything he had…better than anything the entire Alliance had.

  “The last transmission has been forwarded to Commnet, sir.” Carp sounded as steady as ever. “All scanning frequencies are silent now.”

  Calloway leaned back in his seat, looking out across his cramped bridge. Now it was a waiting game.

  “How is the evacuation proceeding?” Cooper Brown stood outside the Capitol Building, enjoying the shade created by the structure. Capitol was a grandiose name for the modest building that served as the seat of the planetary council. The citizens of Adelaide were an independent sort, with a decidedly limited tolerance for heavy regulation, not to mention a profound unwillingness to pay higher taxes to fund the construction of monuments to government. The planet’s administrators were expected to operate on a shoestring budget and, for the most part, that is what they did.

  “Things are moving along. A little slower than I’d like, but we should be OK if we get another day.” Jacob Meklin was the president of Adelaide, a position of limited power and responsibility most of the time, not unlike a small town mayor, but on a planetary scale. However, the Adelaide Constitution gave the president enormous powers in time of emergency, and now Meklin had invoked those provisions. Every resident of the planet was being evacuated to makeshift shelters, and detachments from the militia were out enforcing the mandatory order.

  At some point in its long journey through space, Adelaide had passed through a cluster of heavy metal asteroids, several hundred of which impacted its surface. These collisions delivered the precious trans-uranic elements that were otherwise inconsistent with the planet’s geology. The violent collisions had also destroyed the ecology of a planet that had once been an Earthly paradise, turning it instead into a marginally habitable world of windswept steppes and dusty deserts.

  In their search for the priceless resources buried in the planet’s crust, the mining operations had left an extensive network of tunnels burrowed deep below the surface, and these manmade caverns had now been converted to temporary shelters. Meklin had worked to have the shelters prepared as soon as word arrived of the attack on Barrow but, prior to the emergency declaration, he lacked the authority. The council was hesitant to commit the necessary resources until Commnet brought news of the invasion of Wellington. Then, later than Meklin would have liked, the plan was finally approved. Work began immediately, and the tunnels were structurally reinforced and stockpiled with supplies.

  Now they had to get the people into the shelters before the enemy reached the planet. Unfortunately, they had no reliable estimate of how long that would be. An Alliance battlefleet could cover the distance in a little under four days at maximum thrust. But these enemy ships were a mystery. It had already been two days since they’d arrived in the system, and they had not yet entered detection range of Adelaide’s early warning systems.

  “It looks like we’ll get that day.” Brown was looking down at his feet as he spoke. “They’ll probably be decelerating hard, which means we’ll pick them up almost a day out anyway.”

  Meklin was staring off to the side, looking across the almost-deserted central square. “Yeah.” His voice was somber, almost despondent. “And then what, Coop?” He turned his head to face Brown’s. “We just wait in those holes until they seal us in or dig us out?”

  “Then we fight like hell, Jacob.” Brown had a soldier’s outlook – he looked at a battle an hour at a time, not letting his mind wander too far into speculation. Survive the next hour first, then worry about the one after that. He knew as well as Meklin that they didn’t have much chance, but the only alternative to what they were doing was to give up and meekly wait for death. After ten years in the Corps, that wasn’t something that even entered Cooper Brown’s thoughts. “They’re going to have one hell of a time finding everyone in those tunnels. The super-heavy elements will play havoc with their scanners.” He put his hand on Meklin’s shoulder. “And my people are going to give them hell, my friend.”

  Meklin smiled weakly. He didn’t really feel any better. In truth, his spirit was broken and he’d just about given up hope. He’d do what had to be done – he was as much a creature of duty in his own way as Brown – but his morale was leaden. “Alright, Cooper.” He tried to pump some energy into his voice, for Brown’s sake if nothing else. “You can be sure we’ll fight. We’ve got what weapons your folks could spare in the shelters already. Every man, woman, and child on Adelaide is a fighter now.” In spite of his own foreboding, the defiant talk made him feel a little better.

  “Good.” Brown nodded, a grim smile on his lips. “Is the rest of the council in…” He stopped abruptly, holding up a hand to Meklin as he listened to an incoming message on his earpiece.

  “They’re here, sir.” It was his aide, Captain Krantz, on the com. “Captain Calloway just flashed a message through the satellite. “His scanners detected all seven enemy vessels inbound, decelerating hard. Estimate arrival 16 hours, 20 minutes.”

  “Understood. Put all units on stage 3 alert. Brown out.” He turned to face Meklin. “We’ve only got two-thirds of that day, Jacob.” He paused an instant before continuing. “Enemy ships inbound. ETA planetary orbit, 16 hours, 20 minutes.”

  “Prepare to execute thrust plan Gamma in three minutes.” Calloway’s voice was a little strained, but not too bad for a man staring at 150 gigatons of warheads heading straight for him. “Weapons control, I want full countermeasures ready in 90 seconds.” Like all fast attack ships, Raptor was lightly equipped with point defense. A small vessel, it simply didn’t have the room a cruiser or capital ship did to store dozens of defensive missiles and rockets. The ship was equipped with a spread of ECM devices and anti-missile mines, but otherwise she had to rely on a few light lasers and her dispersed ordnance magnetic batteries. More commonly known as “shotguns,” the turrets of the DOMB system were highly effective at short range.

  “Thrust plan locked in.” Her fingers moved across her board as she spoke. “Weapons control reports countermeasures ready, sir.”

  Calloway was impressed with Lieutenant Khan’s focus, but he could hear the stress creeping into her response. She’d have to be a robot not to be scared now, he thought. “Very good, lieutenant.” He’d ordered the crew to get into their acceleration couches five minutes before, and anyone who failed to obey that command was going to end up as so much strawberry jam. He was about to push Raptor to the limits of her ability, and that meant serious g forces. “Bridge personnel, prepare for thrust burn.”

  He glanced around the control center, watching the acceleration couches activate. Each of the chairs reclined, and heavy padding expanded, almost totally covering the seat’s occupant. Calloway knew how it worked; it was a chemical reaction taking place, vastly increasing the volume of the material in the chairs. It was an ingenious system, which saved a lot of space over dedicated couches or convertible seats with storage areas for retractable cushioning.

  He felt the pinch in his arm followed by the familiar bloated feeling as the drug increased his internal pressure and strengthened his cell walls. One day someone would figure a way for men to go into battle without feeling sick and half crushed to death, but for now this was the best they could do.

  The ship’s AI would fight most of this battle. Once Raptor’s engines opened into a full burn, none of his crew would be able even to lift an arm to press a button or turn a lever. They’d be able to speak, barely, but that was all.

  “Engage countermeasures.” Calloway’s voice was wheezy and forced, the side effect of the drugs that would keep him alive during the coming high g maneuvers.

  “Engaged, captain.” The voice of the AI was calm, unaffected by the drugs now making the crew of the Raptor feel like they had the flu and a hangover at the s
ame time. “Launching ECM buoys now.”

  The ship shuddered slightly as the ECM devices were launched with considerable force. Calloway probably would have noticed if he hadn’t been cocooned in his couch, but swaddled as he was he had to rely on the AI’s announcement. The ECM buoys were small missiles that broadcast a variety of transmissions, all designed to confuse and delay the incoming missiles. Calloway had no idea if the enemy ordnance would be susceptible or not, but he’d find out soon enough.

  “Launching interceptor mines now.” The AI was following the plan Calloway had programmed in previously. The ship shuddered again, harder this time, as it launched its full spread of mines into the path of the incoming missiles. A variant of the DOMB system, the mines would explode when any missiles entered range, blasting out a cloud of small metallic chunks, presumably across the path of an enemy missile. It didn’t take much mass to seriously damage a target moving at 5 or 10 percent of lightspeed. Even a projectile a few centimeters across could destroy a missile that impacted it.

  Calloway gritted his teeth; he knew what was coming. When the ship’s engines fired, Raptor would accelerate at maximum, heading off in a random direction, trying to confuse the missiles’ targeting. It was hard to build enough velocity to escape, especially beginning at a standing start, but Raptor was going to do her best.

  “Initiating thrust plan Gamma.” The AI made the announcement a few seconds before the engines burned, giving the human crew an instant’s warning.

  Raptor shook wildly as its engines, which consumed almost 40% of its hull space, roared to life. Calloway felt the breath forced out of his lungs despite the protection of his couch and the relief provided by the drugs. It took most of his strength to breathe in and out. It was hard to think at all, and almost impossible to concentrate on anything. He was wondering, in a moderately confused state, just how much acceleration the ship’s engines were generating.